


And They All Lived

by AGlassRoseNeverFades



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Betrayal, Character Background Exploration, Character Study, Fairly Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Forgiveness, Gen, M/M, Mizumono Fix-It in a Way, More Feels Than Plot, No Dialogue, Not Explicitly Anyway, This Ramble was Basically Brought About by Metas and Headcanons on a Long Car Ride, This is How I Deal with My Weird Confusing Season 3 Feels Basically, We All Like to Construct Our Own Fairy Tales After All, Which is Why it Reads More Like a Meta than a Fic at First
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4163172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGlassRoseNeverFades/pseuds/AGlassRoseNeverFades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sort-of character study that reimagines how things might have gone if Will had fled on his own that night instead of going to Hannibal's house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And They All Lived

**Author's Note:**

> This short but rambly little thing was born a few days ago on a road trip my husband and I just got back from that spanned from Texas to Florida. You could say it inspired me as driving through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on the way to Orlando got me thinking, "What if Hannibal had been the one going after Will by traveling to places that mattered to him from his past, instead of the other way around?"
> 
> Special appreciation should go to my husband for enduring and facilitating at least an hour or two of total silence on a long boring stretch of road _on our honeymoon trip_ while I scribbled the whole thing down in his notepad. xD

Imagine if it was Will, not Hannibal, who fled that night. Imagine he never went to the man’s house, still torn by indecision, just made his phone call and ran. And it was up to Hannibal then to track him down using his knowledge of Will’s past, going back to places he had mentioned in their sessions.

What’s to be done about Abigail in this scenario? Hannibal thinks he would like to kill her as punishment for Will’s betrayal and cowardly retreat, let Will find out the truth of the gift he denied on the news reports later. It would also by far be the most practical thing to do, leaving her to lie bleeding and broken on the floor like Jack and Alana. He certainly has no time to babysit her while he goes in pursuit of Will.

The thought of fleeing the country now without at least seeing Will first does not even cross his mind. What he will do when he finds the younger man, he has not decided yet. All of his composure and careful planning, gone. Will seems to have that effect on him.

What stays his hand ultimately has less to do with his sentiment for Abigail and more to do with the fact that Will is not there to see it. It would not mean as much if he could not see the expression on the empath’s face as the light dies from her eyes. Maybe there will be a place for her yet in this world.

He takes her to Bedelia instead. Gives them Abigail’s fake passport, a stipend of money, the keys to a rented chateau just outside Paris, and puts them both on a plane. He trusts they will not go to the authorities, though he will not be surprised if they have fled by the time he himself arrives eventually in France. At this point, he simply does not care.

He starts first in the place Will was born, some inconsequential little town in a backwater parish that his GPS cannot pinpoint. It takes him several times driving past the same unmarked dirt road before he finds it. It shouldn’t surprise him, he supposes, that Will’s hometown would be somewhere wild, practically overtaken by growth and swamplands, and nigh unapproachable.

He thinks at first that it seems too small to have been the home of such an extraordinary individual, but then decides that no, it is actually rather fitting. It is like a fairy tale, Will the young child, a dreamer, growing up all but isolated in a village of fools who cannot and will not even try to understand him, until one day he is old enough to venture out alone and seek out the destiny he was meant for. Hannibal wonders then, if this is Will’s fairy tale if that means he was supposed to be Will’s prince, both rescuer and reward for the boy’s hard work and the trials he faced, and feels something like guilt.

Perhaps he goes expecting to find a grave with a woman’s name on it, and thinks it odd when the tiny church cemetery there does not yield what he is looking for. He asks around town until one of the older residents finally says, “Graham? Nah, she don’t go by that name no more. Remarried, didn’t she, and moved on up in the world. Left ol’ Graham and that boy when he was ’bout four, not that I can says I blame her.” Pointing a jabbing finger at his own head as he continues. “Boy wadn’t right in the head, you could tell it early on. Nah, I ain’t surprised that she left. Ain’t surprised neither his daddy took off with him couple of years or so after too, couldn’t stand the shame I expect,” he’ll add as a few of his buddies nod agreeably with pitying expressions on their faces, and Hannibal will contemplate how quickly the FBI would come breathing down his neck if he were to crack all of their skulls right here against the lead-painted walls of the gas station/bait shop the man runs and make them all into soup.

From there he goes on to New Orleans, feeling as though he’s skipping a few chapters ahead in the story. Will would have been an adult long before he returned to the shores of Louisiana and made his way to this fascinating cultural mecca of the peculiar and the occult.

He pictures a young man, cleanshaven, still in his rumpled police uniform at the end of a late night shift because people are more likely to avoid trying to catch his eye that way and he is very tired, too tired to cope and be civil this morning except for just long enough to order his coffee under the awning of the open air Café Du Monde, grimacing vaguely when the attendant tells him it’s on the house and refuses to let him pay for it. Another “perk” of the uniform that Hannibal suspects even as a young man Will could not stand, not after a lifetime of not being able to trust anything given freely and feeling guilt for accepting that which he feels he has not earned.

_Perhaps,_ echoes in Hannibal’s mind palace whisper, _this is why he left rather than accept your rare gift. Perhaps it hurt him to lie as much as it hurt you to be lied to. Or perhaps it is simply_ you _who has not earned his favor yet._

Throat clicking, Hannibal shuts these whispers viciously behind a locked door in the back of his mind, though he can still make them out just barely through the cracks in the door.

Turning his thoughts back to the hopeful young officer Will Graham used to be, Hannibal realizes that he has moved on from the café and follows him through the streets, mostly still quiet and empty at this time of day, until he sees him again, leaning forward with his arms resting against the rails that separate him from a sharp plummet into the Mississippi River below, silhouetted by the early morning light and watching one of the ferryboats as it leaves the dock and glides across the open water. Is he imagining being on it, Hannibal wonders? Asking himself if it’s worth it to wait, worth it to hope when he gets home that there will be a letter in the mail saying he’s been accepted to grad school, worth it to stay so he can get the work experience he needs to get out, get away, and make it all the way to the FBI.

Hannibal leans closer, reminded at once that this Will is, of course, no more than a phantom conjured by his own imagination when the young man does not react. And yet, he imagines that for just a moment, above the smells of the water and this gritty but beautiful city, he can detect the hints of a familiar masculine musk, Old Spice, and chicory before the vision disappears entirely.

He moves on again, to Mississippi, Biloxi specifically because Will had mentioned it once, and envisions a boy playing by himself out on the docks while his father works in the boatyards. Hannibal has a difficult time picturing Will Graham’s relationship with his father, does not know if Will avoided the subject deliberately with him because it would have been painful to recall, or because he considered it one of the few good things from his childhood, something not to be tainted by being brought into one of their unorthodox therapy sessions.

It pains him to realize how little still he knows about Will or understands, pains him all the more as his list of places to visit runs short. He is dismayed to learn there are numerous towns throughout the southern United States called Greensville, too many to go to them all and Will never elaborated which one he meant.

He begins to wonder if he hasn’t gone about this the wrong way, if Will might not have gone another route entirely. It had seemed right to him when he started this little road trip to assume that Will would have come this way, fled the cold and the chaos of the life up north he had failed to build in favor of warmer climes and idyllic scenery that would remind him of simpler times.

It is only by happenstance that Hannibal comes across a brochure for the Florida Keys just as he has all but run out of options. The picture on the front hold his attention, something about these particular trees and the color of the water pulling at him in a way he cannot immediately explain. He closes his eyes and walks back through the halls of his memory palace, searching for where he would have seen such a place.

It is easy and quick to conjure, considering where his thoughts have been circling of late. A photograph, one of the few he had found going through Will’s belongings in Wolf Trap. A cheap Polaroid snapshot of a curly-haired boy looking out at the water, bare toes in the sand, seemingly unaware of his picture being taken.

Hannibal picks it up delicately, just as he had done all those months ago, turning it over. There, in the bottom corner in smudged ink, in an unfamiliar hand that he knows is not Will’s, are the words _“Sugarloaf - 1987.”_

*

The dogs do not bark when he approaches the house. They recognize him as the man who often brought them treats at their old home. He pays them no mind as they come near to sniff and nose at his empty hands. He has eyes only for the man who lies asleep on the porch swing, unaware that he might be only moments away from either his salvation or damnation.

He is tanner than he used to be, dressed only in a thin tee and frayed jean shorts, a half-drunk bottle of bourbon close by on the wooden planks of the porch beneath him, near his hand dangling from the swing. He does not look happy even in his sleep, his mouth pulled down into a small frown, as tiny notes and whimpers of displeasure sound at the back of his throat.

Hannibal stands over Will and watches him sleep, for once entirely at a loss of what to do. He had left Baltimore initially thinking only of the sting of betrayal and the need to punish Will for the cruelty of giving him false hope. Looking at him now, close enough to touch, he is not so sure what he wants. His anger has slowly faded over the last several weeks, feeling himself closer to Will than ever before as he stood in the places he had once stood, looked up at the stars and watched the sun rise and set from views Will might have watched them from, wanting only in the immediate foreseeable future to find Will, to _see him_ again.

And now he is here, having no idea whether he means to curse Will still for daring to leave him or gather him up close and refuse to let go so he can never try to get away from him again. Would Will fight, would he struggle, attempt to call the authorities? Or would he rest his head on Hannibal’s shoulder instead, accepting a knife through his ribs in silence as penance?

Would he, if Hannibal dares to bestow it, accept an equally penitent, forgiving, hungry, punishing kiss against those soft lips instead? The kiss of death and life, just like in the fairy tales. Have they both earned it yet?

With an almost tentative breath, more hesitant and nervous than he has ever been about anything in his life, Hannibal kneels, placing a gentle hand on Will’s shoulder to hold him steady, and bends forward.

**Author's Note:**

> Happily ever after? I certainly like to think so. (Whatever it takes to get us all through this season tbh...)


End file.
